A recent flare-up over "God-given rights” caught my eye, sparked by a Politico writer's comical misunderstanding of a fundamental pillar of America.
She bemoaned that “Christian nationalists … believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don't come from any earthly authority. They don't come from Congress, they don't come from the Supreme Court. They come from God.”
Not being a regular MSNBC viewer, I’m unsure of what Christian nationalism is all about, but they assure me it’s bad.
The underlying understanding of rights, though, is clearly explained in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The writer was lambasted across conservative media, claiming she was misquoted because she later went on to properly point out that “men are determining what God is telling them.” That’s always the rub, isn’t it?
To (most) Americans, the answer to “Where do our rights come from?” is simple. We’ve always had them.
That raises a much trickier question, though: “What are those rights, exactly?”
A philosophy becomes a nation
For much of history it was widely believed that God granted authority to monarchs and rulers through divine right. They were His appointed representatives on Earth, and their right to rule and the laws they decreed were seen as extensions of that will.
Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke formed the notion of universal, inalienable rights grounded in natural law. That thinking was built on the Biblical themes of human dignity, freedom from oppression, and the moral worth of individuals, as well as democratic notions from Ancient Greece to Rome.
Our Founding Fathers put these philosophies into action, boldly enshrining "God-given rights" into the very bedrock of a nation. This wasn’t an academic exercise, but a radical declaration that the rights of individuals are paramount. Those rights aren’t granted by a government, but recognized and defended by that government. They are inviolable.
They combined that philosophy with a government created to protect those rights against both the tyranny of the majority, and the overreach of government itself. The experiment changed the world. And, since 1776, we’ve been arguing over what those rights actually entail.
A continual debate
There’s a reason Twitter wars and election sloganeering seem like they never end, and it’s a feature, not a bug. As our country has evolved, many of our former disagreements have been somewhat or completely decided. We no longer argue over universal education or slavery or women’s suffrage.
But what happens when I believe my inalienable rights are being violated? It unnerves the writer I mentioned earlier, but literally defines the concept of a democratic government.
If you believe you have the right to [insert your poison or pleasure here], you can fight to change minds and change policies.
Sometimes, the most effective weapon for change is disobedience. Starting with the Boston Tea Party, America has been shaped by those pushing society to reevaluate and sometimes recalibrate its moral and legal boundaries. Our history is full of those who took stands that ran counter to the laws or norms of their time, often paying a steep price for their convictions.
The continued success of our country lies in its ability to maintain a dialogue about our competing rights. It’s the lifeblood of our political system, and the foundation upon which a just and strong society is built.
The conversation around "God-given rights" and how we interpret them in the face of modern challenges is far from over.
— Ken
The greatest constitutional eye opener is to realize the Bill of Rights does not create rights but seeks to protect the people from a government which would try to take them away. A recent “tell” was when Barack Obama proclaimed the Declaration of Independence referred to the people being “endowed” with rights but omitted the pesky phrase “by their Creator”. As if “poof…you have rights”. “Oh, where did they come from?” ….”Don’t ask, we don’t want to talk about that”.
The point here is not to get hung up on the word "Creator," but to appreciate the larger point that our rights are inherent. They're not bestowed by a government, so any government that oversteps its constitutional ability to curtail those rights is violating natural law.
Natural rights are an Enlightenment-era philosophical concept rooted in -- but separate from -- religious tradition. The Founders were more Deists than Christians in the modern sense, so their use of words like "Creator" has to be understood in that context. (Jefferson wrote that clause. Google "Jefferson Bible" to find out how wide the gulf between Jefferson's Deism and traditional Christianity could get.)